An after-action review (AAR) serves as a tool for reflecting on past events to identify root causes, evaluate performance, and refine organizational actions and controls. By understanding why events occurred and what worked or failed, AARs enable organizations to continuously improve their systems and processes.

Core Objectives of After-Action Reviews:

Root Cause Analysis:

AARs determine the underlying factors behind both successes and failures, allowing organizations to take targeted action to address issues.

Enhancement of Controls:

Findings from AARs lead to the development of more effective proactive, detective, and responsive controls, reducing the likelihood and impact of future risks.

Structured Learning and Feedback:

AARs provide a structured framework for evaluating past events and feeding lessons learned into future actions and strategies.

Why Option C is Correct:

The purpose of after-action reviews is to uncover root causes of events and improve proactive, detective, and responsive actions and controls, aligning with the principles of continuous improvement.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. Providing incentives: Incentives are unrelated to the purpose of AARs, which focus on root cause analysis and improvement.

B. Ensuring anonymity: While anonymity may be a component of other processes (e.g., whistleblower systems), it is not the purpose of an AAR.

D. Escalating incidents: Escalation may occur as part of incident response, but AARs are conducted after the event to analyze and learn, not to escalate.

References and Resources:

COSO ERM Framework – Highlights the importance of post-event reviews for continuous improvement.

ISO 31000:2018 – Recommends analyzing past events to refine risk treatment measures.

NIST Incident Response Framework – Discusses the role of post-incident analysis in improving cybersecurity practices.